Angels of Open Season

This is a backward sort of adventure, a misadventure that bonded me so securely to my dog because I took the opportunity to deeply connect instead of freak out - a relatively new thing for me.

So let’s begin at the beginning, where I encounter my dog in the forest by chance after creeping him for ten weeks on Instagram. Real deal.

I didn’t know he was mine all that time, not until I met him in person one early Spring day in the west coast rainforest behind my house. All the other pups ran around in a mass together but this one, mine, sat at the guy’s feet staring up at him.

He seemed to be in total reverence for this dude. I could relate. There was something about this guy for me that was so deeply familiar in an uncanny time warp kind of way. I liked it. I had met him a year or two before that and then bumped into him around town quite a bit.

This day in the forest with the puppies he was with his teen daughter and I greeted them as they approached through the massive trees covered in bright green moss and shaggy old man’s beard,

“Wow! So glad I’m running into you now when the pups are all spoken for.”

The puppies and their mom burst past me in sparkling glee. All but one. They laughed. “Nope. This one’s still available.” They looked down at Theo sitting there looking up at them.

“Oh.”

I replied suddenly realizing what was happening. I was with my family - my two year old son, eleven year old stepdaughter, plus their dad. I looked over at them all smiling and nodding to my shock and horror. Puppies are hard to deny.

The other five puppies had sprinted ahead across the Chapman Creek bridge. The guy’s daughter urges them along but the guy turns and walks away backward miming and mouthing

“Text me.”

A couple of weeks later Theo comes to live with us, but mostly with me. He is absolutely definitely totally my dog. Except that he also loves Robert, his o.g. human.

Robert is concerned about me taking on this extra creature in my busy household. He’s had a puppy or two returned already particularly by families with small children that didn’t bargain for the physical impacts of a strong playful animal with minimal manners.

I text him back fully aware that if I don’t alpha up this choice will tear my house down. I say I am sure of the challenge I am asking of myself, that I trust my instincts, and that meeting the challenge of being the alpha for this animal will alter my household in the best way possible.

Theo became “Chewy” the first night at home with me. Robert left and this big throaty howl-sob emerged from my new roommate. The Wookie follows me to bed after these echoing expressions of pure sorrow stop.

This little puppy, who is already more giant than my other dog cat and kid combined, sits beside the bed looking at me, and I - all foolish and swooning - invite him up. He leaps behind me, throws his head on the pillow, and one arm over my belly.

New big spoon.

I have cried over this guy too, by the way, probably way more time now than Chewy, but Chewy still lets out a good one here and there when Robert leaves after being over for a while. Robert comes in and out of our scene with Chewy’s mom, Mia, and brother from the same litter, Ditch.

They are so sweet together. They are also wild hooligans often breaking rules and all the social norms. It’s the age of Aquarius and these pups were born February 14th. Benevolent rebellious revolutionaries, I’d say.

I need one of those collars that keep him in the yard.

I really needed one back when he got hit by a car, then ran into the forest and hid for two days before coming home unscathed in any way, but that would have left us with a completely different story.

He’s pretty excellent on a leash, but ever eager to get off.

Chewy has always been so naturally good on his own. He sticks around here satisfied in our two-acre lot and generally incredibly respectful of my desires made known through our shared language.

There are, however, certain things that throw him off, that take him completely out of his availability for acknowledging my requests in the slightest. Take, for example, the snow right now.

His second winter has been much more significant than last winter. There’s been a foot of snow consistently for a couple of weeks and apparently, it’s Chewy crack.

He’s so into it. He’s having the best time ever and gets swept away in the boundlessness of his natural nature. Like a teenager amped up on hormones, he’s gotta prowl and frolic.

So he left the yard late one night, November 2020. There wasn’t any snow here, but there were a lot of crab shells on the beach down at the bottom of our hill. He was mad about them during our afternoons down there.

He’d gone rampaging the previous nights too and I the cranky mom in her housecoat and slippers drove to collect him all drunk on teen spirit. He was mostly just a couple of driveways down, probably raiding garbage cans and whatever else anarchists do in the dark.

One time though he was all the way down at the bottom and smelled like stinky ol seafood.

I relate to myself compassionately and live in a place where it mostly works really well - a very fluid and open, an ever-increasing fearless expression of neurodivergence. I also see how by classic standards I am irresponsible and dangerous. Openness tends to be perceived that way in the Patriarchal inheritance of customs that disregard, shame, and blame the feminine - nature, feeling, sensation, infinite possiblity.

I tend not to be hyper-vigilant on any front unless triggered and I’ve devoted my life to dissolving triggers. So let’s just say I’m pretty chill and easy-loving energy is probably why my animals listen and stay close ninety eight percent of the time. Perhaps it’s also why they feel secure enough to follow their heart's desire - moms spend a lot of time mentally justifying everything that happens because who actually teaches us to work with all the grief and guilt and shame.

All that aside, I honestly just kept forgetting to tie him up because I hadn’t needed to previously, and starting new habits is hard for me.

Chewy lived with me for six months before this incident and he preferred to stay close… until he didn’t. I was in a real groove of opening the door for him and trusting. He outdoor trained himself because I left the back door open all summer long.

This day that ended poorly with Chewy possibly very hurt and definitely missing in action, the exclamation mark on my dashboard had lit up suddenly, so I didn’t think I should drive the car to go get him. I doddled unenthusiastic about walking down towards the ocean in the chill of the mid Fall night.

Our yard is big, the neighbors like him a lot.

A lady came to the door.

"He’s been hit."

Down on the highway!

I live on a giant hill that heads down to the ocean, Selma Park Road. Much of the street is lined with forest and my driveway comes right before the mailboxes just before the entrance to a web of expansive rain forest hiking trails. There is a minor amount of traffic on our street and no one is really driving wildly as you’re scaling up an 18% incline and most vehicles aren’t that happy about it.

The highway is a ten minute walk down this big hill unless you’re part wolf. The highway cuts our street in two just 500 meters from the ocean.

I’m immediately in a rapidly accelerating panic. I remain in fluctuating currents on that panic state for innumerable hours on end. I am the secondary focus of a gathering of concerned folk, support that arrived due to someone else’s Facebook post.

Damnit. Damnit. I’m really cursing myself.

So many nice people. But no Chewy.

Some people are fatalists. Some people are adamantly positive. It was a long night of being in absolute splinters. The lady that knew the most out of all the people who combed the neighborhood at 11 pm on a Friday, said Chewy would likely be heading home. If hurt he might be in shock hiding somewhere. She called to check in the next morning.

I was out in the driveway very early. First light. Ready to go searching through every expanse of the neighborhood … including a lot of dense pockets of forest littering the properties below us.

I saw him.

CHEWY!

He was standing at the end of the driveway. It was like the perfect Homeward Bound ending scene moment.

(I watched that movie about five billion times as a kid).

I look up and I see him and my heart buzzes with glee. I dropped my metal water bottle and ran towards him.

I scared him off before I could even really get a good look at him or anything.

I was beside myself. What if he really needed attention and I just scared him from home?

A mother’s incessant fear is that she is not good enough for her bright-star-angel-baby.

I called in friends to help. Fairen arrived by chance and I texted Robert, the guy who with Chewys mom and brother. There was a small crew of people at my house for breakfast. I cooked an awful lot of bacon, perhaps, now looking back on it, subconsciously hoping the smell would be enough to lure Chewy back. Especially with us covered in the scent while we went out calling for him.

I collected the plates, tossed them at the sink (exaggeration), and put my coat on. Robert had said he would walk around the neighborhood so I started heading to the chunk of the forest right below our house that we look out into from our dining table.

The dude followed me. Robert.

There was some kind of mysterious psychedelic alchemical energy between us. That walk was like floating in another world.

We emerged onto and wandered the street a bit too. We talked with some neighbors.

Before he left, Robert said that Chewy would be back by noon and for whatever reason, I believed him.

It was ten something AM when my butt hit the couch and I let my head drop over to the side. Chewy will be back by noon. I let myself fall dead asleep. A really solid drolly nap.

I awoke a bit after twelve and he wasn’t home yet. The panic and nausea rose in me again. I went out to walk around some more. While I was walking I realized that he hadn’t said which day by noon Chewy would come back on. My faith was restored and as it grew dark I remembered this really short easy meditation that I learned from a mystic named Alan.

The meditation was presented to me as a charm for wooing animals. For example, people use it when they go on Safari to have approachable energy to see the wildlife up close and personal.

I asked the people around at my house that night to do this meditation with me. People really struggle to get into a short easy meditation, but we did it.

Then I did it on and on through the night because I was so sick to my stomach with anxiety, definitely not sleeping.

I breathed into the endless blackness of my womb and breathed out pink light all around me. I breathed again into the darkness and breathed out pink light all around my house. Next round around the property. Then the neighborhood. And I kept stretching it across the Sunshine Coast, and then the globe, and then the cosmos.

Over and over and over and over and over again. In and out of waking dreams and half-sleep. I did this meditation. I could feel him, Chewy. I could see him. Some kind of psychedelic alchemical mysterious energy between us (too). I could feel him through our interdependent matrix of sensational reality.

I could feel and see him (in my mind's eye) nestled on the earth. Energy was streaming, pouring, draining from his body. Releasing the trauma.

Animals are smart. They know what they’re doing. They’re following their intuitive bodies.

It was not weird that my dog was standing there (in the middle of the road). Standing somewhere for some time is a natural thing for an animal to do. What’s weird (unnatural) is that there was a big metal box speeding in a 50 zone. They smashed into the dog's back end (said a lady who heard it more than she saw it) (but she definitely saw Chewy run away).

While meditating I could feel my dog doing okay. I was doing this gentle breathwork that offered intense circulation in my own system and I felt my system regulating, similar to his as he lay on the earth. It was an uplifting sensational experience practicing this compassion meditation over many hours.

We have time and space to be with the processes of our bodies.

In the 24 hours that followed me seeing Chewys for a few moments in the driveway, I asked many times for a miracle. I asked the universe for another chance just like a Saturday morning.

If I got this gift I would know what to do.

I would not make a loud noise.

I would drop to my knees,

I would put my arms out.

I was still rhythmically breathing into the darkness and spreading pink light in a semi-trancey state as I got ready to go outside Sunday morning.

I had drawn a picture of Chewy and made a couple of posters. I went out super early again and put one on the mailbox and the other on the sign at the entrance to the forest trails.

I was so hopeful I would not have to put up the posters at all. I thought maybe just maybe he would approach me while I was walking with the papers and tape. I jumped at every little movement, ready for my opportunity to try again with him, yet apparently not ready in my still-fritzy-nervous state.

I hung the posters and walked home feeling defeated criticizing myself again for the morning before. I noticed quickly the difference between the flowing circulating pink energy I’d been cultivating in the simple short meditation and the stagnant rigid energy of the criticism.

It feels so obvious now which state is more attractive, and why.

Openness is ultimately rewarding.

I started focusing on the feeling of Chewy knocking me over in delight to be with one another again. I leaned into remembering/imagining the feeling of him licking my face and of the mutual joy beaming between us. Using my mind for these things was so much more pleasurable than the pain of worrying that Chewy might not come back and it might be all my fault and I might be a big fat failure.

I walked down my driveway back towards the house, half defeated half glowing in loving radiance (to inhabit duality is so strange).

When I got to the house, almost in the exact spot I was standing the day before when I had seen Chewy like a ghost there one moment, gone the next. I turned to look back where I’d seen him last.

Was I delusional and hallucinating? My body started moving towards the ground. I was kneeling. I had set my intention so clearly and repeated it to myself so many times that i just knew what to do without having to think it.

I was in awe, in magnificent connection and presence with this creature in front of me. I put my arms out. I said, Hi Chewy, softly. So soft you wouldn’t think he’d have heard me, but of course, he did.

He did not bound towards me. But crept through the initial funnel of the driveway and down the opposite side of the split driveway from me. I could see flashes of him between elements of the tall garden separating the driveway legs.

I stayed mostly still and joyful. A bit of fear crept in. What if he hates me now?

His head poked around the corner.

A beaming smile lit up my whole body.

He bounded towards me.

Knocked me over.

Licked my face.

Like deja vu.

Everything deepened after this experience with Chewy. Not just me. Not just us.

Everything.

Reality as I knew it deepened and widened. Everything became more spacious. There was simply less fear in my life.

I had already been working on an approach to neurodiveregence - a movement, lifestyle - way of being. I called it DCFO. In attending to discharge and circulation we automatically attend to being flexible and open. This is what my pets have taught me. This is what nature, my nature, has taught me and it applies to all of us.

Breathing into the abyss and exhaling pink radiance, expanding the heart space. This is how we harvest security. Security is an inner presence undisturbed by emotional flow. It’s a stable neutrality.

Chewy hid in the forest letting his body come back to neutral after the chemical reactions in his physicality affected by the blow he endured. There was zero trauma evident on his body just two days later.

He lay on the earth and released the charge. Trauma is stuck charge in the body. He didn’t hold on to any of it.

To access this as humans means fully feeling everything. Emotion is just charged energy trying to find its way through the body to be grounded.

To return to neutral.

Suppressing is.not.the.same.as.letting.go.

Repressing.does.not.produce.the.same.result.as.discharge.

Regulating the nervous system is what I had to do all weekend while chewy was missing in order not to freak out and shut down. We really hurt ourselves when we shut down. Prolonged shutdowns of the circulation necessary in our system create breakdowns and meltdowns.

In the decades past, I surely would have had some kind of physical breakdown and mental meltdown being responsible for my dog getting hit by a car and having no idea if he is okay, if I will see him again. Blame blame blame. Criticism. Judgment. Wrong wrong wrong. So bad. Inappropriate. Misaligned.

We really are not groomed to regulate our nervous systems to standards that produce shut down free intimacies - flexible and open lives.

I have let my pets teach me what it means to be free. I am eternally grateful for their unflinching forgiveness as I wake up.

Brother Boo came a few years before Chewy. He came with a wallet full of street tricks. He came while I was pregnant and taught me to be a decent parent. He helped me to remember that if you lean close to something with sharp teeth while your energetics don’t completely say “I’m safe”… the thing with teeth will bite you in the face.

I learned what embodying safety means and then was given a plethora of tests - as a new parent - as a regular ol person on this planet - to challenge me into actually embodying it and not just knowing the definition.

Freedom only ever comes at the price of relinquishing your fear, leaning straight through it, and into your playful heart.

The never-ending story of infinite connection.